If she could have she would have spat full in his face for that insult. And he must have read her anger quickly.
“So that is not it. Then why? I am no ruffler who goes about picking quarrels with comrades. Nor have I ever taken any woman who came not to me willingly—”
“No?” She found speech at last, in a hot rush of words. “So you take no woman unwillingly, brave hero? What of three months since on the road to Lethendale? Is it such a usual course of action with you that it can be so lightly put out of mind?”
Angry and fearful though she was, she could see in his expression genuine surprise.
“Lethendale?” he repeated. “Three months since? Girl, I have never been that far north. As to three months ago—I was Marshal of Forces for Lord Ingrim before he fell at the siege of the port.”
He spoke so earnestly that she could almost have believed him, had not that bowguard on his wrist proved him false.
“You lie! Yes, you may not know my face. It was in darkness you took me, having overrun the invaders who had taken me captive. My brother’s men were all slain. For me they had other plans. But when aid came, then still I was for the taking—as you proved, Marshal!” She made of that a name to be hissed.
“I tell you, I was at the port!” He had released her and she backed against the settle, leaving a good space between them.
“You would swear before a Truth Stone it was me? You know my face, then?”
“I would swear, yes. As for your face—I do not need that. It was in the dark you had your will of me. But there is one proof I carry ever in my mind since that time.”
He raised his hand, rubbing fingers along the old scar on his chin, the fire gleamed on the bowguard. That did not match the plainness of his clothing, how could anyone forget seeing it?
“That proof being?”
“You wear it on your wrist, in plain sight. Just as I saw it then, ravisher—your bowguard!”
He held his wrist out, studying the band. “Bowguard! So that is your proof, that made you somehow send me to the Toads.” He was half smiling again, but this time cruelly and with no amusement. “You did send me there, did you not?” He reached forward and before she could dodge pulled the hood fully from her head, stared at her.
“What have you done with the toad-face, girl? Was that some trick of paint, or some magicking you laid on yourself? Much you must have wanted me to so despoil your own seeming to carry through your plan.”
She raised her bound hands, touched her cheeks with cold fingers. This time there was no mirror, but if he said the loathsome spotting was gone, then it must be so.
“They did it—” she said, only half comprehending. She had pictured this meeting many times, imagined him saying this or that. He must be very hardened in such matters to hold to this pose of half-amused interest.
“They? You mean the Toads? But now tell me why, having so neatly put me in their power, you were willing to risk your life in my behalf? That I cannot understand. For it seems to me that to traffic with such as abide up that hill is a fearsome thing and one which only the desperate would do. Such desperation is not lightly turned aside—so—why did you save me, girl?”
She answered with the truth. “I do not know. Perhaps because the hurt being mine, the payment should also be mine—that, a little, I think. But even more—” She paused so long he prodded her.
“But even more, girl?”
“I could not in the end leave even such a man as you to them!”
“Very well, that I can accept. Hate and fear and despair can drive us all to bargains we repent of later. You made one and then found you were too human to carry it through. Then later on the road you chose to try with honest steel and your own hand—”
“You—you would have taken me—again!” Hertha forced out the words. But the heat in her cheeks came not from the fire but from the old shame eating her.
“So that’s what you thought? Perhaps, given the memories you carry, it was natural enough.” Trystan nodded. “But now it is your turn to listen to me, girl. Item first: I have never been to Lethendale, three months ago, three years ago—never! Second: this which you have come to judge me on,” he held the wrist closer, using the fingers of his other hand to tap upon it, “I did not have three months ago. When the invaders were close pent in the port during the last siege, we had many levies from the outlands come to join us. They had mopped up such raiding bands as had been caught out of there when we moved in to besiege.
“A siege is mainly a time of idleness, and idle men amuse themselves in various ways. We had only to see that the enemy did not break out along the shores while we waited for the coasting ships from Handelsburg and Vennesport to arrive to harry them from the sea. There were many games of chance played during that waiting. And, though I am supposed by most to be a cautious man, little given to such amusements, I was willing to risk a throw now and then.
“This I so won. He who staked it was like Urre, son to some dead lord, with naught but ruins and a lost home to return to if and when the war ended. Two days later he was killed in one of the sorties the invaders now and then made. He had begged me to hold this so that when luck ran again in his way he might buy it back, for it was one of the treasures of his family. In the fighting I discovered it was not only decorative but useful. Since he could not redeem it, being dead, I kept it—to my disfavor it would seem. As for the boy, I do not even know his name—for they called him by some nickname. He was befuddled with drink half the time, being one of the walking dead—”
“ ‘Walking dead’?” His story carried conviction, not only his words but his tone, and the straight way he told it.
“That is what I call them. High Hallack has them in many—some are youngsters, such as Urre, the owner of this,” again he smoothed the guard. “Others are old enough to be their fathers. The dales have been swept with fire and sword. Those which were not invaded have been bled of their men, of their crops—to feed both armies. This is a land which can now go two ways. It can sink into nothingness from exhaustion, or there can rise new leaders to restore and with will and courage build again.”
It seemed to Hertha that he no longer spoke to her, but rather voiced his own thoughts. As for her, there was a kind of emptiness within, as if something she carried had been rift from her. That thought sent her bound hands protectively to her belly.
The child within her—who had been its father? One of the lost ones, some boy who had had all taken from him and so became a dead man with no hope in the future, one without any curb upon his appetites. Doubtless he had lived for the day only, taken ruthlessly all offered during that short day. Thinking so, she again sensed that queer light feeling. She had not lost the child, this child which Gunnora promised would be hers alone. What she had lost was the driving need for justice which had brought her to Grimmerdale—to traffic with the Toads.
Hertha shuddered, cold to her bones in spite of her cloak and the fire. What had she done in her blindness, her hate and horror? Almost she had delivered an innocent man to that she dared not now think upon. What had saved her from that at the very last, made her throw that stone rubbed with Gunnora’s talisman? Some part of her that refused to allow such a foul crime?
And what could she ever say to this man who had now turned his head from her, was looking into the flames as if therein he could read message runes? She half raised her bound hands; he looked again with a real smile, from which she shrank as she might from a blow, remembering how it might have been with him at this moment.